Showing posts with label communications. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communications. Show all posts

Sunday, 10 October 2021

To provoke a sigh

This week, I participated in Territórios Públicos (Public Territories), the national meeting of services of education and mediation organised by 23 Miles, the cultural project of the Municipality of Ílhavo. I like the name of this initiative, which makes me think of words like “community” and “communication” – communication that creates community – the connection created by a shared task (to remember the speech “What is to love a country” by Tolentino Mendonça).

The beginning of the meeting was marked by the participation of Álvaro Laborinho Lúcio, by the worlds he brings along and generously shares in his public interventions, with a mixture of charming seriousness and captivating lightness. I could highlight several points, but, considering the theme of this post, what seems to me most relevant is to refer to the way he encouraged us to follow the impulse of our constant ignorance, which takes us from the stereotypes, to the interrogation, the questioning, the doubt…

Saturday, 3 April 2021

What is the change we are longing for?

"Missing you", at the entrance of Musicbox.

Musicbox in Lisbon has made me smile more than once in the last months. I´ve never been there and, still, it has made me feel we know each other and we are going through this together.

I have repeatedly questioned why so many cultural organisations are unable to show their human face, share feelings, be close to people in different moments in life (both in people’s life and the organisations’ life – which should, actually, coincide on so many occasions). Back in May 2020, I wrote about Globe Aroma’s “Love Letter to a Caring Community” – a letter expressing sadness, concern, confusion in the face of the pandemic and clearly stating that the venue would close, not because of fear, but out of love and care. Every other communication I came across at the time of lockdown – but also when the time came to reopen – sounded like a decree. In that same post last May, I made a first attempt of creating a wish list, of defining the ingredients that could help us imagine a better post-pandemic world. There hasn’t been a second attempt yet: time, humanity, care, respect, appreciation and mission; this is what was – and still is - on my wish list.

Monday, 29 January 2018

Still on Maria Matos: a theatre's ethos

"Have a Great day!", by Vaiva Grainytė, Lina Lapelytė, Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė (Photo: Simonas Svitra). Maria Matos Theatre, 2017

Ethos: (Greek éthos, -ous) noun
distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group or institution
Source: Merriam-Webster dictionary



Anne Pasternak became the director of the Brooklyn Museum in New York in 2015, succeeding Arnold L. Lehman, who had held the post for 18 years. Anne impressed me positively in her first interview for the New York Times when she stated: "I am excited to build on that ethos of welcome".

At the time of Pasternak's appointment, there were several voices criticising the choice of someone who had never worked in a museum before. However, this sentence, right at the end of the article in the New York Times, was enough for me to think: She got it! She understood "who" the museum she's going to work for is!

Thursday, 30 November 2017

Operatic struggles


Walking around in Vienna, three or four years ago, I came across the poster of Oper Frankfurt’s “Hansel and Gretel”. Much time has passed, but I can still recall the smile and the warm feeling this poster provoked. Simple, direct, funny, informative. It was that one moment and it was about opera.

Thursday, 9 March 2017

Sunday, 30 October 2016

MAAT, a generator of expectations

Image taken from the website of MAAT.
I am still amazed at the way the recently inaugurated MAAT - Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, designed by Amanda Levete, is integrated into the landscape. When I approach that area or when I cross the bridge from Lisbon, I always expect to see a huge building overlapping or hiding the Central Tejo power plant. But no... The Central Tejo still emerges majestically and the new building stands at its side as a smooth and fluid note.
My first contact with the new museum was back in June. In fact, it was the reopening of the "old" museum (Museum of Electricity in Central Tejo), after its renovation, and the MAAT brand was launched. Afterwards, I followed the campaign for the inauguration of the new building and I read some interviews of the museum director, Pedro Gadanho, thus forming an initial opinion / expectation. The various criticisms that arose with the opening of the building, as well as some discussions with colleagues, brought me more "food for thought", just like my first visit to the new building.

Sunday, 24 July 2016

Managing museums: a portuguese case

"Panels of St. Vincent" at NMAA (image taken from the National Museum of Ancient Art Facebook page)

The claim of a new legal status, of a special status, by the National Museum of Ancient Art (NMAA) in Lisbon has resulted in a very healthy debate among museum professionals in Portugal, especially (and unfortunately) after the announcement of the Minister of Culture that this status will actually be given to the museum. Independent of our criticism, positive or negative, of this case and this process, there is no doubt that we owe this very necessary debate to the NMAA, its director, António Filipe Pimentel, and to the entire museum staff*.

Tuesday, 19 July 2016

Guest post: Social role of museums; new migrations, new challenges, by David Fleming

Photo taken from Twitter @IcomOfficiel

Quote from our MOOC (Massive Open Online Course):

“This course has opened my eyes. Never before thought of museums as being harbingers of change in anything.”

The same person wrote later:

“Yes, my opinion has changed and I’m much more convinced that museums have a positive role to play in achieving and enhancing social cohesion. I had been stuck in my ‘sixties experience of the passive museum, storing items for the mere sake of storage. Today they are put to use to make a positive difference in the world.”

Sunday, 29 May 2016

First in our hearts

Image courtesy of the National Museum Soares dos Reis
How could we define the 'first' museum? Is it the one that best fulfills its mission? Or the one thar comes first to mind when you hear the word 'museum' (every marketeer’s dream)? Is it the one that has the biggest collection or the one that has the best collection? Is it the one that makes more exhibitions? Is the 'first' museum the one that produces a lot of news for the media, but continues to work for the same elite? Or is it the one that rarely makes the news, but works to diversify its 'elites'? Which one deserves to be considered 'first'? And who assigns the 'primacy', the museum to itself or the audiences, actual and potential, that benefit from its action?

Saturday, 7 May 2016

So what?

“So what?”. A frequent question/reaction concerning our field, whether verbally expressed or secretly thought. It’s a legitimate question and one we are rarely available to discuss.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, "Retrato de Marten Soolmans" e "Retrato de Oopjen Coppit" (imagem retirada do jornal Telerama)

When I had first read the news about the joint acquisition by the Louvre and Rijksmuseum of Rembrandt’s Portrait of Marten Soolmans and Portrait of Oopjen Coppit, for €160 million, I didn’t exactly think “So what?”, but rather “Why?”. Why these two paintings? Why all that money? Once I tried to understand a bit better the importance of the paintings (whatever importance that might be, within the context of art history or any other), I was most often confronted with the adjective “rare”. The portraits are “rare”, being exhibited in public was extremely “rare, etc. etc. This brought up even more questions: Rare how? Why should they be seen more often? Why did these two public museums make such a huge (financial and collaborative) effort to acquire them?

Sunday, 6 March 2016

Recent past

Exhibition "Return - Traces of Memory", Lisbon

A few weeks ago I read Lily Hyde’s text Living Memory II, questioning the construction of narratives out of recent historical events. In this case, the armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine and specifically in the town of Slavyansk. A bit more than a year before, Hyde had talked to the Slavyansk Museum director, Lilya Zander, who was already collecting Trophies from an incomprehensible war. At that time, the museum director had said that “Our job is to tell the history of our region”, adding that “the museum is not trying to show ‘for’ and ‘against’. We’re trying to show the facts.”

Sunday, 31 January 2016

Peacocks, ostriches and a third way

Anne Pasternak, Brooklyn Museum Director (Photo: Erin Baiano for the New York Times)

A few weeks ago, I read about six curators at the Canadian Museum of History who expressed ethical concerns about the purchase of artifacts recovered from the wreck of the Empress of Ireland. These concerns included the manner in which the artifacts were collected and the fact that the museum paid for artifacts from an archeological site. Not only were their objections dismissed, but the museum hired a lawyer and threatened them with legal action, were they to repeat their concerns to anyone else. According to the museum President and CEO Mark O’Neill, “Internal discussions like this are normal, and frankly, making them public is not” (read more). This statement left me thinking which would be the ‘OK’ subjects to discuss in public and, frankly, how come the conditions of acquiring objects for the museum collections is not one of them.

Sunday, 20 September 2015

Intellectual access and not an easy way out


All too often, the promotion of intellectual access by some in the cultural sector is discarded as ‘dumbing down’. Recently, I read the following in Rob Riemen’s “The eternal return of fascism”:

“In the culture of this society [the mass-society; our contemporary society] there is an ongoing trend towards the lesser, the lowest level, because this is where one finds most things people can share. This is exactly why university education indicators are levelled down, so that ‘everyone’ can study and obtain a degree. And the same will apply to the arts, because they will have to be accessible to all, not only in what concerns tuition fees, but also at the level of comprehension. After all, the fiercest indignation is directed towards what is difficult. Because what is not understood immediately by everyone is difficult, that is ‘elitist’ and therefore undemocratic.” (my translation from Greek)

Sunday, 6 September 2015

The Italian slap

Eike Schmidt, new director of the Uffizzi (image taken from The Art Newspaper, Photo: Zuma Press/Alamy)

“A slap on the face of Italian archaeologists and art historians.” According to an article by Margarita Pournara in the Greek newspaper I Kathimerini, this was the statement of Vittorio Sgarbi, former Italian Minister of Culture, regarding the appointment of seven foreign professionals as directors of Italian museums.

Since the appointment was announced on 18 August, the issue was widely discussed in the media. 

Tuesday, 14 July 2015

Who are you?



I hold strong impressions from the walls of the underground in London (and other cities), a fundamental platform for one to keep up-to-date with the city’s cultural offer. Now, imagine what would happen if all those cultural organizations, competing among themselves and with other entities for people’s attention, did not consider carefully their visual identity so that they would stand out immediately and make a connection both with interested and especially distracted individuals.

Friday, 26 June 2015

The message, the language, the options


Paula Sá Nogueira on the TV programme "Inferno".
The discussion that was generated after the announcement of the allocation of subsidies from the Directorate General for the Arts (DgArtes) made me think once again about the way this sector communicates with the public, citizens and taxpayers. There is a larger issue, of course, that of the subsidy itself: the system of application, the evaluation of the proposals, the monitoring of the entities, the purpose and duration of the subsidy. But today, here, my reflection focuses on communication.

Monday, 11 May 2015

One good idea, two responses and some lessons



It’s 125 years since Vincent Van Gogh’s death. Starting May 3 and for 125 days, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam will be answering 125 questions regarding the painter, his life and his work. The museum invites anyone interested to ask a question to send it through their website and a page especifically created to present the results of this Q&A (watch the promotional video and visit the webpage).

Monday, 27 April 2015

Museum Next starts here

Christian Lachel, BRC Imagination Arts (Photo: Maria Vlachou)
It seems to me that the three words that were mostly heard at the 2015 MuseumNext conference were: emotion, stories, engagement. Words that clearly mark the change that has been taking place in museum attitude, aiming to establish, with the help of their collections, a better, more relevant and meaningful relationship with people - more people, different people, common people.

A presentation that was wholly dedicated to this subject was “Emotionalizing the Museum”, by Christian Lachel of BRC Imagination Arts. “Does the experience transform your guests and compel them to share it with others?”, Christian asked. And this is probably the right question to ask. Although the transformation we all so much desire to make happen might take time to be consciously acknowledged by individuals (if it is acknowledged at all), the compelling wish to share with others is a more immediate indicator of the occurance of a meaningful encounter. And the starting point is people’s heart, acoording to Christian. The process of creating an engaging experience is one from the inside to the outside and not vice-versa. One that aims to involve people through a meaningful story, looking then for the right tools and creating the appropriate physical environment for the encounter.


Christian Lachel, BRC Imagination Arts (Photo: Maria Vlachou)
Another issue that repeatedly came up was that of digital vs physical. At the same time that museums are racing to embrace the new digital tools and platforms in order to create more engaging and meaningful experiences, they often seem to take a step back, re-evaluating the advantages and strengths of the physical encounter.

An inspiring project of the Brooklyn Museum, the Ask Mobile App, has gone through these stages of thinking and evaluating (which are openly shared on the museum’s blog – a great example of professionalism, generosity, transparency and accountability that more museums should have the courage to implement). As Shelley Bernstein explained to us, at a time when the Brooklyn Museum is re-evaluating a number of points of contact with its visitors (its austere foyer, its confusing reception area, the lack of seating), it also wishes to improve their experience allowing them to ask on-site and in real time any question they might have regarding the objects or the exhibitions in general. The project is still being tested in its details and will be launched in June. 


Shelley Bernstein, Brooklyn Museum (Photo: Maria Vlachou)
At an earlier stage, the museum had members of its staff on floor and discovered that visitors loved engaging in conversation with them. Such a large museum would need a lot of people, though, to be able to cover all areas. In order to optimize the idea of the direct and in-real-time contact with a member of staff, they decided to turn to technology. A team of six people will be available to answer visitor questions sent through their mobiles using the Ask Mobile App. Evaluation so far has shown that people still consider this contact to be personal and the museum is confident that this will be one more way of fulfilling their mission of being “a dynamic and responsive museum that fosters dialogue and sparks conversations”. For one thing, the museum has discovered that people seem to take more time looking at the objects... looking for questions to ask!


Is there anything more personal and physical, though (and funny and inspiring), than being taken to a museum tour tailored to your needs and interests by Museum Hack? “I hate museums!”, this is how Nick Gray started his presentation. And he did hate them... once. Now all he wants is to share his passion for them with people who still hate them, people who feel that museums are not for them. A colleague from the Museum of Architecture and Design in Oslo called Museum Hack “our natural allies”. And aren’t they indeed! Nick’s favourite object at the Metropolitan Museum is the fragment of an Egyptian queen’s face. This is what he had to say about it (quoting from memory): “If these are the lips, can you imagine the rest? How beautiful she must have been? And although we don’t know who she is and which tools were used to make her, we know she’s made of yellow jasper. Yellow jasper was so-so expensive, that the only other object at the Met made of it is this tiny. In a scale of hardness from 1 to 10, where diamond is 10 and marble is 3, jasper is a solid 6. It makes marble feel like rubber...”. Aren’t museums f***ing awesome?!


Nick Grey, Museum Hack (Photos: Maria Vlachou)
My visit to the recently renovated International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum somehow put all these thoughts and ideas to the test. It’s a museum that greatly combines the physical and the digital, using technology in order to enhance the meaning of the objects, to share powerful stories and to engage the visitor – both emotionally and intellectually – in the discussion of quite sensitive universal questions. The three main chapters of the story are “Defending Human Dignity”, “Restoring Family Links” and “Reducing Natural Risks” and each space/chapter was created by a different architect, proposing quite distinct environments. One of the most touching moments for me was in the room that exhibits the gifts offered by prisoners of different conflicts to the Red Cross delegate in charge of their case. It made me think of the beauty, sensitivity, creativity and humanity that can still emanate after the horror of barbarity, brief glimpses of a renewed hope. I must say, though, that the most powerful moment was touching the extended hand of a witness on a screen, a gesture that would trigger their testimony. A brilliant conception, linking the physical to the digital and creating a profoundly emotional and memorable experience.


I must say that in almost every museum visit, presentation and discussion during the conference, there was an underlying issue for me: can museums fulfill their social and educational role, can they be relevant and engaging, if they don’t also clearly assume their political role? Right on the first day, Gail Dexter Lord introduced the concept of soft power as “the ability to influence behaviour through persuasion, attraction or agenda setting”. How can museums exercise this power? "We cannot take sides", colleagues often exclaim. Oh, but we do... Sometimes with our silence or by pretending to be neutral; more often with the objects we choose to show or not to show, the stories we choose to tell or not to tell.

More than taking sides, though, assuming our political role is to assume that there is actually more than one side to every story and to allow for space for these views to become known, to be discussed, so that citizens may get better informed, see their own views being challenged, meet and listen to the ‘other’, develop empathy and understanding, take a stand. Museums are not islands and, as Tony Butler (Derby Museums / The Happy Museum Project) said, “What’s happening out there is as important as what’s happening inside”. Isn’t it urgent, and doesn’t it make sense, that museums in the 21st assume their role in promoting democracy?


Gail Dexter Lord (Photo: Maria Vlachou)









Monday, 13 April 2015

Shall we re-brand?


Recently, due to some articles and posts I read, the question of how museums are perceived by people re-emerged in my mind. I felt there is an urgent need to take branding seriously, as a sector.

To those not very familiar with the concept of branding, I suggest viewing Peter Economides’ brilliant speech Rebranding Greece, where he explains things very clearly:

- A brand is a set of impressions that lives in people’s heads.
- Branding is the process of managing these impressions.
- Strong brands create strong and consistent impressions.

Museums have definitely created strong and consistent impressions. The very popular expression “it’s a museum piece” – meaning something old, dead, dusty, not useful, something from the past – is the proof of what these impressions actually are.... Our need to promote museums saying they are “live spaces” also indicates that we know perfectly well what people think about us.

One reads: "Is your company a museum? It isn't, is it? Change now your museum piece."
Some years ago, I did my first interview for the ICOM Portugal bulletin with the Director of Marketing of Xerox. The main subject of our short conversation was the company’s campaign for the exchange of old printer parts with new. The gentleman tried to be kind to museums when I questioned him about the association they made: “(...) Many of our customers are very reluctant to replace old equipment while it still works. This is a common attitude towards some of our ‘pet items’, we like to keep them regardless of the actual cost of maintaining or knowing that technological developments have already put them ‘out of fashion’. In a company, the ‘out of fashion’ element can make the difference between success or survival. A museum is typically a place where we can see valuable pieces of another time. The campaign aims to communicate that, despite the equipment working and being valuable, its antiquity does not allow it to have the functions and characteristics of the current technological era. That is, it is behind the times and its place is in Museums, where we can see how our ancestors lived and worked.” It was a thoughtful attempt, but we can all read between the lines, can’t we?

The title of the article is: "The green world will be at your disposal... in a museum"

More recently, I read two articles (here and here) about Korean artist Daesung Lee’s project “Futuristic Archaeology”. The photographer explained that human action on the environment was one of his concerns and suggested that green landscapes will become scarse and we shall recall them in a space where they will be presented dead, untouchable and unattainable: a natural history museum. We can all read between the lines, can’t we?



The third case I would like to discuss is that of a museum campaign: the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires. Tha campaign dates from 2011, but it came to my attention now, through a post on Comunicacion Patrimonio. The museum slogan is “Un museo, nada de arte”, trying to place emphasis on people and their story. Each photo of the campaign presents a Holocaust survivor and says: “He/Her and millions of other people did nothing to be in a museum”. I do get the point.... And still, I don’t... The museum approved a campaign (a beautiful campaign, I must say) which reinforces a series of stereotypes: that when we talk museums we talk art museums; that people needn’t be afraid, they won’t find art in this museum; that museums are about the great (great artists?) and not about common people. As I said, I think this is a beautiful campaign, one that puts people in the forefront. But I can´t help disagreeing with the fact that, in order to put their message across,  they used a number of stereotypes that help reinforce people’s negative impressions of museums. And they are one...

Do people’s impressions coincide with what museums are today? I won’t deny that some museums, in almost every country, are still very much worthy of what people think of them. But many are not. Museums have largely changed their attitudes, ways of working, image, and this is why they need to seriously think of ways to change those perceptions in people’s heads.

One of my favourite books is “Designing Brand Identity” by Alina Wheeler. I went back to reading the chapter “When is it needed?” (meaning, when is ‘branding’ needed), and she identifies six reasons when one needs to look for a brand identity expert: 1. new company, new product; 2. name change; 3. revitalize a brand; 4. revitalize a brand identity; 5. create an integrated system; 6. companies merge. The case of museums falls clearly under the 3th reason, considering that they need to reposition and renew their corporate brand; they’re no longer doing the same thing they did when they were founded; they need to communicate more clearly about who they are; too many people don’t know who they are; they wish to appeal to a new market.

Impressions in people’s heads are powerful. Stereotypes take a long time to dissolve. No wonder many still keep away (also helped by the way museums communicate their offer in general, unable to appeal, many of them, to the common person, the non-specialist visitor). Museums need to take an active role in changing these perceptions and they need to do it carefully, knowingly, urgently and... united.


Monday, 30 March 2015

What's in a title?



Choosing the title of an exhibition, activity or event is not something easy. Not when one wants it to convey something about the content and to be curious or funny enough in order to attract people’s attention – and also, to be efficient when applied on promotional materials. What one usually finds when opening a cultural agenda are titles that either claim the obvious (for instance, the name of an artist we might or might not know) or attempt to describe the content in a rather dry, dull, repetitive way – words like “place”, “memory”, “look”, “treasures” are words museums are very fond of. Another case we should consider is that of contemporary plays and performances, whose titles may be 2-3-lines-long, only to be abbreviated  for “everyday use” by the artistic team itself and by the audience, leading to what should have probably been the title in the first place....

I tried to remember titles that worked well for me, and two came immediately to mind:

Wien Museum (Photo: Maria Vlachou)
“Unter 10 – Wertvolles en Miniature” (Under 10 – Treasures in miniature), at the Vienna Museum, was a 2013 exhibition that presented objects from the museum’s collection based on the strict rule that no item could be more than 10cm in width, height, depth or diametre. From objects that aimed to simply respond to the challenge of miniaturisation to baby utensils, smelling bottles or illegal political leaflets, this exhibition made us look (also with the help of magnifying glasses..), and look better, differently, into the collection. The museum was not on my visit list, but I couldn’t resist the title.

Entrance of the exhibition "Disobedient Objects", V&A (Photo: Maria Vlachou)
More recently, “Disobedient Objects” was another exhibition title that caught my attention. It first came up in my news feed last summer, among dozens of different news titles. I stopped scrolling down and opened the piece. Quoting from the Victoria & Albert Museum website, “From Suffragette teapots to protest robots, this exhibition was the first to examine the powerful role of objects in movements for social change. It demonstrated how political activism drives a wealth of design ingenuity and collective creativity that defy standard definitions of art and design.” I was able to visit the exhibition last November and it lived up to my expectations. The object that touched me the most was a defaced lybian banknote (the scribbled face being Gaddafi). It reminded me of a Lybian man being interviewed right after seeing Gaddafi’s corpse and saying: “We had always thought he was a big man. He is small, he is so small.”

Defaced lybian banknote from the exhibition "Disobedient Objects", V&A (Photo: Maria Vlachou)
It is also worth talking about some refreshing examples that have recently come up in Portugal.



“Vivinha a saltar!” (Alive and jumping!) is an exhibition at the Bordalo Pinheiro Museum about two symbols of the city of Lisbon: the “varinas”, the women selling fish in the streets, a  popular figure in the work of Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro; and the sardine, which has developed into an icon of the city and a source of inspiration for contemporary artists. The name of the exhibition, “Vivinha a saltar!”, was one of the varinas’s most famous cries when promoting their merchandise and had been the title of a chronicle about portuguese politics and society published by the newspaper “A Paródia”, founded by Bordalo Pinheiro.




Last week, the Municipal Museum of Penafiel, in the north of Portugal, celebrated World Poetry Day on 21 March with “Dois garfos de conversa” (the literal translation being “Two forks of talking”), a conference about the town’s poets, followed by a dinner at the museum. The museum director explianed to me that both title and poster were created by the museum team.



On that same day, the youth collective Faz 15-25 celebrated its first year of existence at the Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva Museum with films, poetry, talks, workshops and food, inspired by the museum’s temporary exhibition “Sonnabend | Paris – New York” and addressed to youth audiences. The title of the initiative: “Faz-Tá POP!”.



Finally, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation surprised us last December with an invitation “P’ra Rir” (To Laugh), a cinema series (now in its second edition) which gives people the opportunity to watch cinema in a big room, the Foundation’s recently renovated Grand Auditorium. According the João Mário Grilo, responsible for the programming, the laugh seemed to be an appropriate inaugural gesture. “And it would be wrong to think that this is a (yet another) “comedy series”, because in cinema, as in life, one laughs in different ways, even with dramas.”



In both big and small cultural institutions, the process of choosing a title may involve different people and departments: curators, directors, publicists, education and communications staff. Recently, the Gulbenkian Foundation decided to involve the public in the choice of the title of a 2016 exhibition at the Gulbenkian Museum. As mentioned in the beginning of the post, the objective when choosing a title it to come up with something that is able to convey the content, to attract people’s attention, to be efficient when applied on promotional material (in this case, good graphic design is a definite plus). One last piece of advice, from our colleagues from the Australian Museum: “Make sure staff at reception/front-of-house are comfortable saying the name aloud as they'll often be the ones selling the exhibition to visitors.” They’re right!


With thanks to: Elisabete Caramelo, Isabel Aguilar, Maria José Santos, Rui Belo, Sara Pais


More readings: